1. Poetry: You cannot extinguish that which lights itself from Pádraig Ó Tuama on Poetry Unbound, Hiking Moraine State Park by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza shared by Maggie Smith on The Slowdown,  If You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem shared by Maria Popova on The Marginalian, Dinner Guests and Nothing Today from Julie Barton, The Staircase (“the eternal present”) and It’s Good to Be Here from James Crews, A Loud Death by Richard Jackson, In the Bleak Midwinter and With Astonishing Tenderness and Present by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Love What You Love by Julia Fehrenbacher, Everything is Going to Be All Right by Derek Mahon shared by Patti Digh, I Planted Something by Frederick Joseph, Benny and the Stillness by Gary Lark, and in related news, poet Maya Stein’s Conversations in Poetry series (the next of which is a conversation with poet James Crews).

2. How to Be Human: Kahlil Gibran’s Recipe for Our Spiritual Perfection as a Species from Maria Popova on The Marginalian.

3. The Analog Life Project with Lori Roberts from Little Truths Studio. “Let’s spend less time scrolling our days away and set aside more time to participate, to make, to connect, to remember.”

4. Exposing ICE’s Obstruction and Abuses by Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper.

5. Good stuff on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Actually, Mel Robbins, Life is Too Short To Holiday With Racists, and Christian, If You’re Celebrating ICE (or Silent), You Shouldn’t Be Celebrating Christmas, and If Hell Exists, It Will Be Filled With Congressional Republicans, and Empaths, Sociopaths, and Why America’s Divide Isn’t About Politics Anymore, and Please, Do Feed the Artists, and ‘Happy Holidays’ isn’t an Insult to Jesus. Christians Who Weaponize Christmas are.

6. What if you did the thing…relaxed? “What a simultaneously simple and complex invitation” by Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse.

7. Vital Cat Update from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds. “This is just a nice little reminder that generative AI is shit.”

8. Are GLP-1s undoing women’s body acceptance work? “When weight loss isn’t the goal” by Dacy Gillespie on unflattering.

9. Recipe I want to try: Oatmeal Molasses Cookies.

10. Traveler Hikes Tallest Mountain in Japan at 2AM—Unprepared for What Awaits. This makes me really sad.

11. Nordic people know how to beat the winter blues. Here’s how to find light in the darkest months.

12. 36 Products Reviewers Loved So Much They’re Buying Them Again As Gifts.

13. Top 25 News Photos of 2025 on The Atlantic. (gift link)

14. How to buy the greatest gifts: personal shoppers on their 17 rules for perfect presents.

15. Sustainable gifts: 27 meaningful presents that do good.

16. The Small Art of Noticing from Patti Digh.

17. The 20 Breathtaking Winners of International Landscape Photographer of the Year 2025.

18. We’re entering a new phase of the resistance. “Mapping the shift from shock to the beginnings of mass action over the last 10 months of the anti-authoritarian struggle in the U.S.”

19. Letters to Boulders. “A poet geologist reads the earth” by By Karen Donovan.

20. The potluck manifesto. “Less shouty than most manifestos, but maybe you feel this too” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

21. Remove What Stands Between You and Your Joy by Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

22. The 100 Best TV Episodes of the Century.

23. Presence As Survival. “Being here in a time that pushes us toward performance and harm” by Frederick Joseph.

24. Let’s agree to stop ‘keeping the peace’ this holiday season. “As we approach the holidays, here are eight tips for discussing difficult topics with family that center connection over conflict.”

25. On Telling the Truth, a great prompt from Jami Attenberg, worth considering whether you are a writer or not.

26. You don’t have to stay anywhere forever, an unfinished drawing and an important message from Jenny Lawson.

27. Can you help Elizabeth answer her question?: “If you or someone you love has had brain surgery or a brain injury, will you share your experience with me in the comments?”

28. The sights and sounds of Bhutan.

29. The Art of Wintering: How to Find Strength in Slowing Down.

30. Allowing Yourself to Be: Stepping Out of Doing Mode.

31. 5 questions to spark & direct your generosity. “End-of-year giving will never right the wrongs of this very broken world. That’s not the point, so don’t talk yourself out of giving just because that is the clear truth. Pursue sharing your resources anyway, because it’s the kind of person you want to be with other people, and because doing nothing also won’t change anyone’s material circumstances.”

32. The Things I Didn’t Carry. “I forgot the family treasures, I remembered the Victoria’s Secret bra.” This is a long standing dilemma for me (who lives somewhere with a regular “fire season”) and I never know how to answer the question: What would you take if a fire was coming for your house? “It wasn’t just me: grown women, too, were overwhelmed by these decisions, by the choices between practical and sentimental, by the spontaneous, choice-less pull of emergency.”

33. The Quiet Animal of Your Future and Other Questions from Isabel Abbott. This reads like a poem, every question a potential writing prompt.

34. All Those Tender Spots, “On choosing whether to excavate your past or not” from Jami Attenberg.

35. The Best Novels of 2025 on Five Books. “As 2025 draws to a close, we’ve put together a list of all the fiction books that have won prizes or been picked out by our editors as worth reading this year. This includes books picked out for their literary achievements, as well as good books in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, science fiction and mystery books.”

36. Little Free Library Divinations: Searching for the Meaning of Life in Discarded Books and Found Objects, another gorgeous art project and offering from Maria Popova.

37. Safety Within Unsafety. “How to feel safer when there’s nothing you can do to actually make things safer” from Satya Robyn.

38. Meet Radha, the adorable world’s smallest water buffalo measuring just over two feet. She is so CUTE!!!